Reform councillor who wants benefit claimants killed joins Senedd

Reform UK councillor Francesca O’Brien posted that she’s completed her Senedd member induction. The fact that she’s taken her seat as a Reform politician shows her party really doesn’t care what its candidates say about people.

Reform UK’s new MS, the same Francesca O’Brien who defected to Reform UK from the Conservatives saying it was a ‘gamble’ (because it’s not about principles).

Oh, and she once said people on benefits should be “put down”. https://t.co/qXACxRZban

— Reform Party UK Exposed 🇬🇧 (@reformexposed) May 10, 2026

Reform councillors treat people as less than human

O’Brien is far from the only Reform member the party has turned a blind eye to, as the Canary reported:

Ben Rowe posted Islamophobic, antisemitic and racist memes. Reform said it was 'investigating', so how come he's now a sitting councillor?

Via @willem_moore_uk https://t.co/xKyGhLh6TI

— Canary (@TheCanaryUK) May 10, 2026

Reformed Tories

As Reform Exposed highlighted, O’Brien began her political career as a Tory. She unsuccessfully ran to be the MP for Gower in 2019, before successfully becoming a councillor for Mumbles in 2022.

O’Brien would later switch to Reform in 2025, telling Wales Online:

For me it’s very much a gamble. Reform are very good at engaging with people across all ages, particularly the younger generation and I think it’s really important to get younger people into politics.

I’ve never seen a party that engages like this across generations and wherever you sit demographically. I want to be part of that, get involved and help fine-tune some of the policies.

This is how Reform Exposed interpreted what O’Brien said:

Reform UK’s new Councillor Francesca O'Brien has described her defection as "a gamble".

It’s just a game to them, she doesn’t have principles, just a will to power, or else it wouldn’t be a gamble, it would be a principled stand…https://t.co/CSQWFn5pBh

— Reform Party UK Exposed 🇬🇧 (@reformexposed) August 19, 2025

At the same time, Wales Online reported:

And although the mother-of-two said she lived and breathed being a councillor in Mumbles, she said “speaking off the top of my head” she would be keen to stand at next year’s Senedd elections if the opportunity arose.

This year O’Brien did indeed run to join the Senedd (Welsh parliament), and she was successful. So why is this a problem?

It’s a problem because she’s previously made comments like the following:

Benefit Street..anyone else watching this?? Wow, these people are unreal!!!”

She also said:

My blood is boiling, these people need putting down.

Generally, you don’t want people in positions of power to favour genocide.

Benefits Street

If you’re unfamiliar with Benefits Street, this is what Canary founder, Kerry-Anne Mendoza, wrote about the show:

One of the most insidious developments during the prime ministership of David Cameron was the rise of poverty porn – television shows like Benefits Street, which turned poverty and destitution into cheap thrill entertainment.

She added:

Benefits Street was just one in a long and sad list of poverty-porn programming aired during Cameron’s tenure. Channel 4 also brought us Skint, Benefit Busters, How to Get a Council House, and Benefits Britain. The BBC even chipped in with We All Pay Your Benefits.

This list is not even exhaustive. Just some of the lowlights, if you will.

All of these shows, intentionally or otherwise, feed into a myth that the UK is some sort of paradise for benefit cheats.

It’s a tried and tested technique to focus on the small number of ‘badly behaving’ people in a minority group to suggest that the entire group behaves like that. To their eternal shame, Channel 4 and the BBC functioned as the propaganda wing of David Cameron’s austerity-pushing coalition government on this one.

In the current day, the media and political spheres spend more energy demonising migrants than poor people (which isn’t to say they don’t demonise people on benefits). The reason for this is obvious.

Following years of austerity, more people than ever are claiming in-work benefits. As such, it’s harder to form a majority consensus around the idea that all benefit claimants are evil.

The Conservatives, Labour, and Reform do still demonise claimants, of course, but if you look at the polling, none of them are majority parties.

‼️POLL | Reform lead by 1pt

➡️ Ref: 21% (-)
🔵 Con: 20% (-1)
🟢 Grn: 20% (-1)
🔴 Lab: 18% (+1)
🟠 Lib: 11% (+2)

{ Seats }
➡️ Ref: 170
🔵 Con: 161
🟢 Grn: 109
🟠 Lib: 73
🔴 Lab: 52
🟡 SNP: 48

Poll: @LordAshcroft, 23-27 Apr (+/- vs 30 Mar) pic.twitter.com/QjevEqb8SJ

— Stats for Lefties 🍉🏳️‍⚧️ (@LeftieStats) May 3, 2026

Myth making

Speaking more on the myth of the greedy benefit claimant, Mendoza wrote:

In reality, according to the government’s own figures, benefit fraud amounts to just 0.7% of all claims. The total cost of benefit fraud is £1.2bn a year – this is less than half the annual cost to the Department for Work and Pensions of administrative errors.

In short, the government spends twice as much money fixing typos than it does on fraudulent benefit claims. But you wouldn’t know that from watching these shows. Far from it. You would be left with the impression that Britain was facing a benefit fraud epidemic.

To be entirely fair, a lot of people fell for the anti-benefits propaganda in the 2010s. The problem is we know O’Brien is still a believer because she’s joined Reform — a party that attempts to draw a line between ‘good workers’ and ‘bad claimants’.

My party is the party of alarm clock Britain.

— Nigel Farage MP (@Nigel_Farage) November 3, 2025

In line with the shifts we talk about, Reform now puts more emphasis on the people who aren’t on benefits (the ‘alarm clock’ Britons) rather than the people who are. The point is the same, though. The party wants you to think some people are ‘strivers’ and others are ‘scroungers’.

This is all very ironic when you consider that Farage has barely bothered to show up to do his job since he became an MP:

'Skive Minister' Nigel Farage is getting away with the equivalent of only working 7 days a month while earning millions from side hustles

By @willem_moore_uk https://t.co/CTE8RxUIGK

— Canary (@TheCanaryUK) May 7, 2026

Perhaps when O’Brien reads about Farage’s attendance record she’ll also call for the UK to put him down?

Featured image via the Canary